Like most of the world on quarantine I’ve been reading more and thinking about cities, the future. After recently finishing Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, it got me thinking about the future of cities and our collective global struggle to acquire and keep less stuff. This book foreshadows global trends that are continuing across the globe.
So some background first, Spoilers AHEAD. Sister of My Heart, if you haven’t read it is a story about two girls who grow up in Calcutta, India in the 1980s. The two girls are raised by their mothers and a widowed aunt in the family house. The girls were born around the mid 1970s, when India had a total fertility rate (TFR) of about 5.2 (according to World Bank data). That world would have been slightly different from the world their mothers and aunt were born into; when India had a TFR of almost 6 (Urban India most likely would have had a smaller TFR). Importantly, the smaller household had fewer children to pass off family heirlooms to and toward the end of the book, the mothers and aunts had to sell off the house. The house was sold off because it could no longer be maintained and it was sold off to a developer who converted it to apartments.
This reminded me of a podcast I heard back in late 2019 from KCRW in Santa Monica, CA, Design and Architecture with Frances Anderton with an interview of Adam Minter. Adam Minter is the author of Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garbage Sale. Based on the interview this book covers several topics that all seem very interesting. The one area that stood out for me was the story about a woman in Japan that had to empty the house that was owned by her parents and grandmother. Specifically, the woman had to dispose of 12 handmade Kimonos that were made by her grandmother; she had decided to sell them.
This point got me thinking and connected me back to Sister of My Heart. As we (the global We) are having smaller families and requiring less space to live in, how do we 1) dispose of the cumulative stuff that has been acquired over the last 2-3 generations of consumption and 2) how do we consume going forward?
For the first questions, I am not an expert and will leave those answers to others to think about. As an urban planner, I am really interested in the second questions. In the United States, we are (or were) moving toward an even more urban (or metropolitan) society with people living in cities or in close proximity. Even in the era of Corona Virus, I think this trend will continue. I think that in order for this trend to continue three things have to happen, 1) multifamily housing in the form of low-rises and high-rises will have to better incorporate mixed incomes, 2) public transportation will have to be increased so people who live in multifamily housing of all incomes can access employment and services and 3) green space will have to be maintained and increased so that urban dwellers can still enjoy some green space. The City of San Francisco comes to mind as a place where it is said that there are more pets than children in the city, and the billionaires are displacing the millionaires. I don’t think achieve these outcomes in many cities is a goal of most people.
We as a planet will continue to consume “stuff,” the question is; is it possible to continue consumption on a smaller scale that is still economically viable, provides employment and respects the environment. Maybe one way forward is asking manufacturers to increase the percentage recycled materials used in their products.
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